Beware Trojan.Stabuniq, a new malware targeting American banks

Add “Trojan.Stabuniq” to your list of strange malware and other viruses to watch for. What makes this malware something to take notice of isn’t necessarily the scale of its reach or what it does to your home systems, but who and what it seems to be targeting. After all, isn’t there something to be nervous about when more than a third of the malware’s targets happen to be financial institutions?

Trojan.Stabuniq was discovered at the start of this year by Symantec, according to a blog post written by the company’s Fred Gutierrez. As he explains, Stabuniq hasn’t actually been detected on many systems since its discovery almost a year ago, and those that it has been found on have been localized to the United States (most are in North East while some made it as far west as Arizona, Idaho and Montana). However, what is more unusual about the spread of Stabuniq is the breakdown of its targets. “Approximately half of unique IP addresses found with Trojan.Stabuniq belong to home users,” Gutierrez wrote. Additionally, 11 percent “belonged to companies that deal with Internet security,” something that he puts down to those companies intentionally infecting machines in order to try and understand the nature of the malware. “A staggering 39 percent, however, belong to financial institutions,” he went on. “These financial institutions had their outer perimeter breached as the Trojan has been found on mail servers, firewalls, proxy servers, and gateways.”

Stabuniq reportedly relies upon spam email to transfer onto machines, with the offending emails containing links to a server hosting a Web exploit toolkit that downloads and installs the malware once activated. According to Symantec’s technical details for the malware, it has only affected systems running Windows 2000, Windows NT, and Windows XP, and is likely to disguise itself within another application folder as it collects the following information from the computer:

Architecture type

Computer name

File name of the threat

IP address

Operating system version

Operating system service pack version, if installed

Running processes

This information is then broadcast to one of at least eight different servers in remote locations.

According to Gutierrez, the malware itself is relatively benign and easily removed when discovered (In the recommendations section of its technical details about the malware, the company essentially recommends “basic security best practices” to deal with the threat). But while that’s true, what is more disturbing is the seeming ease with which the malware – that, collects, and transmits information from the contaminated computers – made it onto systems belonging to banking firms and credit unions. Should we be concerned about a wave of mass identity theft and credit fraud hitting in 2013?

Cryptomining may be the key to untold riches and the future of currency, but it’s also an environmental nightmare. Heatmine, thinks it has the answer, but it could mean bolting a mining rig onto every home and business in the country.

After a string of Windows 10 update issues, including severe data loss for a number of users, Microsoft's Corporate Vice President of Windows, Michael Fortin, has spoken out about quality control surrounding Windows development at…

Mozilla officially launched Firefox 64 by placing new features into the laps of its users including new tab management abilities, intelligent suggestions, and a task manager for keeping Firefox's power consumption under control.

In an attempt to garner more subscribers for their favorite vlogger and secure his status as having the most YouTube subscribers, PewDiePie supporters claimed to have hacked thousands of printers worldwide.

Which music streaming platform is best for you? We pit Spotify versus Pandora, two mighty streaming services with on-demand music and massive catalogs, comparing every facet of the two services to help you decide which is best.

Sometimes you just want Chrome to show a little personality and ditch the grayscale for something a little more lively. Lucky for you, we've sorted through the Chrome Web Store to find best Chrome themes available.

Have you encountered a webpage that won't let you hit the back button? Someun scrupulous websites employ what's known as history manipulation, preventing you from hitting the back button, but now Google Chrome will be fighting back.

Google is following in Amazon's footsteps with plans to expand its presence in New York City. The company announced on Monday, December 17 that it's investing $1 billion on three sites in Lower Manhattan for more than 7,000 workers.